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Known Issues

Preset view tells to update version, though version is later than requested. This is typically caused by preset with control characters in its name (ASCII 0-31). Specifically, see if you have “whoiswolf_retro2_^_old_photo” preset installed, this preset name contains control character just before the word old. Rename or remove preset and restart plugin.

Since there’s lots of comments about various things, here’s some random highlights of future roadmap (in no particular order):

keyword support

develop preset support

bonjour support

improved metadata view

more UI controls (mode dials, split slider)

latency improvements (window messages)

quick develop view

Feel free to comment on these ideas or anything else!

104 Responses

Jon

I would love to see more screen shots of the app, especially how it handles the curves dialog. This app is exactl what I’ve been looking for (well, i was actually loooking for a customizable midi controller app I could use with knobroom… :).

Currently, all you see in appstore page is all you get. More controls and pages are of course coming, but currently supporting all the major workflow features have greater priority.

Tone curve especially is a bit funny looking at the moment, since there is no UI controller for split levels. Instead, it is represented as three separate bars (Shadow/Midtone/Highlight Split). However, nothing will happen in Lightroom if you attempt to set e.g. Midtone level below Shadow level.

Lightroom’s Point Curve setting is not (yet) supported, it is also pending UI control features.

Plugin only gets run when Lightroom is not busy rendering photo, so it sometimes appears to run a bit slower on some photos. Rendering preview might help. We are investigating some alternative approaches to interfacing with Lightroom, which might help with latency.

The desktop problem might be related to Mac implementation of prev/next buttons, it is implemented as a keyboard event to Lightroom 3 main window. Are you running Lightroom with 2 screens, so that you have the secondary screen active?

There will be plugin updates on ad-hoc schedule until the plugin handles all the different usage environments without effort. And of course, there is a roadmap of features which will be implemented when the bugfixing is not blocking it. We are aiming for “1.0” version on second half of 2011.

The app will update when necessary, but everytime we update, we need to go through Apple’s testing.

Thanks for the app, it is looking nice. I am running LR3.2 on Windows 7 and I have a couple issues/feedback points:

1.Latency. Updates do not apply until my finger is taken off of the iPad. This detracts from the usability of the app. It would be great if the sliders moved on the computer at the same time as when I move them on the iPad.

2.In Develop, History only shows ‘LRPAD Develop’ for any changes made through LRPAD. This is my biggest issue as I use the History section a lot and I need to know which changes are which. Can this be changed?

Cheers and thanks again for developing this app. I look forward to seeing the future updates.

Latency is a big issue and we are working on it. There is no official way with Lightroom API, but we’ll figure out something else.

Second, the history is also created by Lightroom’s plugin API. Perhaps there could be a slider name associated with each edit, but the problem is that currently we cannot combine several slider changes into single history entry, like the mouse editing does. Hopefully it will be resolved together with #1.

Looks like a great app and I’m really looking forward to getting home and trying it out. I just was curious, is there any way you could make the app usable with the ipad plugged into the computer (as opposed to pushing changes over wifi). I know I wouldn’t mind my ipad being tethered if/when I was doing editing – especially if it took care of some of the lag.

If they do, you probably are running LR3 plugin without write access to plugin directory. Currently, the TCP/IP connectivity is handled by a separate process, which needs write access to plugin directory. Easiest way to provide this is to install plugin into your user directory (not under Applications/Program Files). If you choose to install in some other directory, you need to add write access to LRPad.lrplugin folder for your user account.

Hello,
I bought LRPad from app store and tried it with my Lightroom 3 Versiom 3.3 German Language. The prev and forward keys are working . Each time I try to press another key the lrpad resets. Do you have any hints for me
Best Regards

Hi thanks for the quick answer.
I ve installed the plugin into my users folder under a directory called lrplugins and verified that I have write access to the folder lrplugins.
That could not be the cause of the problem
I have no firewall activated and I m in the same segment of my network.
What else could it be
I mworking with a normal Macbook having leopard installed and my ipad is on ios 4.3

If you have originally installed into directory without write access, there might have been the previous instance running. You can kill it with Activity Monitor (or “killall lua” on commandline). Next, open plugin manager and reload the plugin to restart the server process.

Hello,
just to let you know I’ve found the cause of the error.
My Macbook was connected to ethernet lan and to wlan. So when I just are connected to either wlan or lan the lrpad works correctly but if I’m connected to both it won’t
I think it gets confused about what way to go. smile
Maybe you could take care of this It’easy to try out
Regards

Hello,
just to let you know about.
I found the cause of the error with the restarted app each time I try to touch the lrpad triggers.
Im was connected with my Macbook to wlan and lan. If I disconnect one or the other Everything works fine.
Maybe you should know about it to fix it. It should take care of the situation that a laptop could be on cable and wlan at the same time.

This may sound a very strange question, but does LR need to be the active application on the PC? The only reason I ask is I have 2 screens, and the wife would love to be able to use the mouse to navigate the internet and do her own stuff, while I sat beside her processing photos. Of course, this is not possible using simply mouse and keyboard.
By the way, I’ve only just found this app, but as a pro photographer, this looks great! Hopefully the issues I am reading about w.r.t. lag are progressing – I don’t suppose the iPad 2 has improved that problem? I know from using slower computers that lag can be a real problem when working with sliders.
Anyway – look forward to seeing more….
Phil

The latency is mostly in Lightroom side, as the plugin API is doing much more than what the slider does. But there is now a experimental slider mode supported under Windows, which is much faster but supports only the basic operations, and only while Lightroom window is active.

In the plugin, there is an option to disable using keyboard shortcuts, after disabling it the plugin does not care which window is active. It is however untested by us, there might be some other issues with Lightroom itself.

There will also be another plugin update soon, which will have even tighter integration of plugin and Lightroom.

When I start the app on my Ipad using 192.168.0.9 I get the app keyboard. When I touch any key on the app the program cisconects and says lr pad disconected from the host(pc lr3.3)application was open . suggestions? PS iam running and actiontech modem dsl gateway

Do you see numbers in sliders? If you do not, you might not have permissions to write to plugin directory. If you see numbers in sliders, but those are not the correct values or the values do not change when you change photo in Lightroom, there might be a phantom lua process running, which needs to be killed (kill wlua.exe in task manager), and Lightroom restarted.

0.4.294 works fine, but 0.4.295 doesn’t work. There is only once initial one way communication (LR to iPad) and other changes in LR do also not appear on the iPad. Changed back to 0.4.294 and that works perfect.

The current version does not exit the server process when Lightroom exits (because there is no public API to do it…we are working on it). This causes problems when you upgrade the server, the old server might be still running and blocking the new one. We are working on a proper fix.

As a workaround, you can kill the server process in OSX by killing “lua” task using Activity Monitor, or from command-line “killall lua”. Under Windows, the task name is “wlua.exe” and you can kill it using Task Manager. (and, r294 fails to start on Windows, there should be no difference between 294/295 under OSX).

Amazing, very efficient and so easy to setup.
My only regrets are about the lack of resetting a slider (double tapping on it’s name as in Lightroom would be convenient) and the improper naming in the develop history (it’s hard to find one’s way in lots of “LRPAD develop” items).

If it takes ages to get the disconnected screen, it sounds like you have a firewall problem, which blocks all the traffic. If you are running a firewall software in your computer, make sure there is port 57723 incoming allowed. Typically, on first start, you should see a dialog which asks you to allow. If you denied it on the first run, you can just remove “lua” or “wlua” entry from the firewall applications, and you will get asked again.

Also, make sure you are typing a private network address to the field (e.g. 10.x.x.x, 176.x.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x).

If you are running inside your private network, you should not enable port forwarding, it is only useful if you are using LRPAD over a internet.

1) Individual reset is coming up, most likely to be implemented with a two finger tap, but it needs some further evaluation (there are also other gestures coming up, so we need to be very careful with these). Note that you can already long tap on the section name to reset whole section.

2) Preset view will soon have new “apply” button to permanently set a preset, without applying the previous preset will be cancelled when applying a new one.

App is not working at all – when trying to connect I immediately get the message “disconnected”. Firewall is deactivated. Plugin is running according to plugin manager (but I don’t see a lua process in the task manager of windows)

This is a great idea for an app but I can’t help thinking there is a long way to go simply because I have immediately found a few essential things to be missing.
Yes, of course everyone has their own unique workflow and needs, but for me the app would need to be able to do the following before I could even consider using this in a usual working day:

1. Treatment selection (i.e. colour or black and white): the only way to convert to b&w at the moment is to desaturate or use a preset, not ideal. Or is there something I am missing??
2. The ability to reset a slider back to the default value (this would mimic the same action as when you double click on the slider label in LR). At the moment you have to move the slider manually back to zero it this adds valuable seconds to each edit.
3. Undo – I know this will be tricky whilst you still have so many ‘lrpad develop’ points in the history… but you gotta aim for it.
4. ability to paste settings from previously edited image. This is essential to the way I edit – edit one image, apply the same settings to the next few images in the filmstrip.
5. also how abut being able to swipe the screen to change each screen (from Basic to Detail to Color etc)
6. Crop… hmmm, not sure how you’d do that but maybe just an option to enter crop mode and straighten? or to be able to choose a certain aspect ratio for the crop?
7. Rating – surely I should be able to add a star or pick rating to the image? Essential. Why would you have the ability to color rate but not star?

Maybe one day this will be a great app, there is definitely potential there, but at the moment it really is just a novelty thing cause there is far too much missing. Right now I feel like I wasted 6 quid. But if that 6 quid will help towards solving the points above, I’ll give it another go. I’ll be interested to hear some feedback.

1. B&W is not yet supported, but it is coming up later in future update. You can anyway do the same with desaturated image and luminanance adjustments.
2. There is current only section reset, which works by long hold on section name. We are not really convinced that per slider reset is worth it.
3. Undo is problematic, because we have no control over Lightroom’s history. Only way to “undo” something is to reapply the previous setting, which again creates more history.
4. Copy settings is under investigation
5. First prototypes were swipe and scrolling based, but it can interfere with sliders so we dropped it
6. We’d love to, but Adobe provides no cropping API at all!
7. Ratings is coming up too. The labels are there because we had a button component ready, but stars would benefit from slider like functionality, so it did not make it to the initial versions.

Currently, we are working on new features so that you could do stuff on the touch screen that is complicated to make on using the Lightroom itself.

Bought the app, and have had a small problem which has stopped me from trying it again (so far). I would be working on a photo using my PC, and suddenly I would see an LRPAD change appear in the history – though I didn’t notice a change in the development settings.
This kept happening, so I killed the app and turned the iPad completely off, in case it was getting confused messages. Still happened.
I was processing a wedding, iPad still turned completely off, and I was browsing the history of a photo which I had spent a long time developing….I went back to a very early change to check a small detail, suddenly an LRPAD change appeared, essentially erasing all of the “future” changes I had made. I had to disable the plugin completely to prevent this.
Anyone else come across this?

First, apologizes for taking so long to respond, but we are currently in holiday season ;)

It appears that the keyboard shortcut does not work properly with OSX Lion. As a workaround, please disable using keyboard shortcuts in LRPAD plugin preferences and reload the plugin. We’ll investigate it further later on to see if it is possible to restore the functionality with OSX Lion. (Sending keyboard events has faster response time, as it allows interrupting Lightroom’s internal rendering engine)

I have installed the app and plugin. I am running Windows 7 on a PC. When I run ipconfig I see for a moment what looks like an old DOS window opening then it closes. I can’t see it long enough to get the PC’s IP address. Am I doing something wrong?

The ipconfig command is indeed command-line application. Just start a command prompt with “cmd” command, and then run ipconfig command to see the network configuration, or use any other tools available.

Promising app! Could be a killer one for all LR photographers if you dial it in for perfection, you’ll be rich in no time.

It’s necessary to be able to reset sliders to a zero value from the iPad. Like double-clicking on the name in LR develop module. As an alternative, to reset the slider to the default develop settings in LR, which is actually what the double click do.

Some bug seems to exist also; when switching from color to bl/w and back, the color controls don’t always change.

For future development, please make the slider setups customizable in size, type and number etc.

As said, this is so promising, if you get it dialed it’s a given complement for all photographers using LR and an iPad, which is pretty much everyone.

I have installed the app and the plugin. Plugin is running fine, no firewall. When I click on the button to enter the host ip address nothing happens…no visible way to enter the ip. Reinstalled everything and still no luck. Any ideas?

Hi and thanks for a cool app. Just bought the app and see it as useful when I want to use full screen mode with only my pic on one screen with the editing tools on another.
One question though….I notice that when I select the “Lightroom Presets” preset panel on the iPad, I get a preview of what the preset is going to do. Even though the preset is not “realtime”, it is still useful. When I select any of the other group of presets there is no “preview” mode so I am kind of flying blind until I actually apply it and then see it’s effect on my actual image. This is kinda like stabbing in the dark without a preview and slows down my workflow considerably since I then have to “undo” and try another preset, etc. Is there a plan to add a “navigator” preview panel like on the Lightroom interface or some other way to preview the presets before applying them to the actual photo?? Thanks in advance for any help regarding this issue and have a Great New Year!! :-)

The plugin requires write access to server directory, so we are suggest installing it under your c:\users\ directory. Alternatively, you can add your username to have write access under plugin directory by right clicking plugin folder, properties and permissions.

very nice app, but I have 2 questions:
– In the history every step is recorded as LRPAD, is there a way to have a full description of every adjustment made?
– No preview appears for the development presets, how can I check if it takes time rendering them?

Currently, all the adjustments share same title in history. This was originally a technical limitation, but we can probably remove it in future versions and generate proper titles for entries. However, the plugin interface does not provide access to value column, so those will never be exactly like built-in interface history titles.

LRPAD only supports pre-rendered preview thumbnails and we are supplying ready-made thumbnails for LR3 and LR4 default presets. For other presets, rendering could be done manually, but it is a rather technical task and involves special plugins and command-line tools, so we think it is currently out of scope for many users.

LR4 update is already available, which means that you can set Process Version 2012 from the app and it supports LR4.0 controls. There are no other differences between LR3 and LR4.

The latency should reduce a bit when we get the new plugin server complete, as we are using different way of communicating with actual Lightroom process. Another source of latency is the actual RAW rendering (during rendering, Lightroom halts all plugins), but we can’t really help with that, only that helps is a faster CPU ;)

Thank you for the update. Prior to this I was unable to use for more than one function then it would lose connection. Have been working with all morning – no prob.

Suggestion if that is ok – It might be nice if the bottom row of buttons – Basic, detail, etc… – could be move to the top of the screen. I have a habit of inadvertently hitting one of these with my palm. Maybe others are having same prob?

What’s the latest status on the latency with LRPAD an Lightroom 4? Is it to the point that you get immediate results in the develop module as you drag the sliders, or do you still have to take your finger off the slider for Lightroom to show the changes?

You do not have to lift your finger to send the event, but there is a 30ms timer that is throttling the amount of events sent to Lightroom. Lightroom does its best in rendering, but the total latency depends on the image format (JPEG/RAW), image pixel count, cropping, process version, CPU power etc.

If you adjust slider by tapping, only single value gets sent to Lightroom, so when the rendering is complete, you immediately have a correct image. If you slide your finger, you might send 10-30 different values, but Lightroom is capable of maybe rendering only 5 images, which can be experienced as lag.

What if the app was built to use bluetooth instead of (or in addition to) wifi. Would that help reduce the delay in communication?

Also, I wonder if you could “focus” on just one tool, so that it takes up the entire screen, giving you all 7.75″ to swipe left to right. It’s like having a longer focus ring on your lens; it gives you more fine-grained control over your result.

Latency is not really in the transport medium, but its the way Lightroom API works. While the photo rendering is in process, the plugin execution is suspended and it is resumed only after the rendition is complete. Adjusting a develop slider will send tens of adjustments, which will congest inside Lightroom if the CPU is not powerful enough (speed also depends on the image, resolution, cropping etc ).

Are there any new updates coming soon? The last release was way back in April (8 months ago). I just stumbled across this, and think it’s a wonderful idea, but don’t want to buy something that’s been abandoned.

Is ther an undo button somewhere? I may be missing it, if not is that something that could be added to each page. It would help in moving between tabs to undo something from a prior tab that was changed.

Meanwhile I am using LR3 with your great LRPAD.
I just bought my Nikon D800. Turns out that I have to upgrade to LR4 to be able to read D800 NEF files.
Now, when I tried to buy LR4, Adobe only sales the latest LR5.
Than I cant use my LRPAD… can I?

I can’t find any option to flag the images for selection only star rating and colour label ? flagging is the way lightroom prefers you to select/cull images and the way i’ve always done it, am i missing it or is their chance it’ll be getting put in ?

lastly, the preset preview ? when i seen the app in the app store i loved the preset preview but it only shows up in the LR standard presets and not the ones i’ve created or VSCO’s ?

I bought LRPAD and it’s been working fine. But why are the controls slow compared to dragging the sliders in Lightroom? If I change vibrance, there is a 1 second lag between dragging the LRPAD slider and the image updating. There is no lag when dragging the slider in Lightroom itself. Can this be improved?

I was about to purchase your app but it lacks one HUGE feature : flagging!
Being able to sort your catalog from the ipad with a view that has like 5 huge buttons (Pick, Unpick, Xclude, Next, Previous) would be great!